Category Archives: Stabbing

Sandesh Dhavan, who was found murdered in a Virginia motel room earlier this month

A 27-year-old man is in the Dallas County Jail awaiting extradition to Virginia, where he’s accused of murdering a 23-year-old SMU engineering graduate student from Mumbai earlier this month.

The Henry County Sheriff’s Office says Benjamin Tovar should be back in Virginia “fairly soon” to face charges that he stabbed India-born Sandesh Rajendra Dhavan to death in early July in a motel room they were sharing. The two men were spending the summer in Virginia working for GTL Americas Ltd., a telecom company.

Two weeks after Dhavan’s body was discovered by law-enforcement officials, there are still more questions than answers. Investigators still don’t have a motive. They still don’t know when the homicide occurred — July 7, when Dhavan’s body was discovered, or, perhaps, a day or two earlier. And they still don’t know why Tovar returned to Dallas following the death of the man with whom he shared the motel room.

“Hopefully, those questions will be answered in the days to come,” says Lt. D.W. Davis in the sheriff’s Criminal Investigations Division.

This much is clear: On July 7 Dhavan and Tovar’s employer couldn’t reach the two men and became concerned about their well-being. Someone at GTL Americas called the manager at the Knights Inn in Collinsville, Va., and asked if a manager could check the room to see if they were OK, which is how, at 11:37 a.m. on July 7, the Henry County Sheriff’s Office came to receive a 911 call concerning a body found inside Room 153.

Dhavan’s body was taken to the medical examiner’s office in Roanoke, which determined his death was the result of multiple stab wounds. In a release issued July 7, the sheriff’s office said only that Dhavan “was from India and here on a work/study program,” and that they were also “looking for an associate of the victim to check on his well-being, Benjamin Rios Tovar,” who was believed to be driving a rented 2016 Mazda.

On July 8 Tovar was arrested in Dallas without incident shortly after he turned in the rental car. Dallas police say he was taken into custody at his residence along the 17700 block of Vail Street in Far North Dallas.

Lt. Davis says it appears Dhavan and Tovar didn’t know each other in Dallas. “By all accounts,” he says, “they met through their employer.” He says the two had gone to Virginia to work on assessing the signal of cell-phone towers: “One operated the vehicle,” Davis says, “and the other, the computer equipment.” SMU says Dhavan was working in Virginia as “part of a co-op internship program.”

Davis says authorities aren’t yet sure when the murder took place — “it could have been one or two days previous” to the body’s discovery — and they do not yet have a motive. But, he says, “we’re still investigating.”

SMU, meanwhile, extends its condolences to Dhavan’s family.

“SMU’s Office of Student Life is reaching out to his fellow students and is offering counseling resources to anyone in the SMU community needing assistance in dealing with this loss,” the university says in a statement released this morning. “A memorial service is being planned for a date after Mr. Dhavan’s friends and faculty have returned to campus for the fall semester.”

McKinney police and fire crews responded to a stabbing in the Dollar General parking lot on Tuesday. (Photo courtesy Vincent Ramirez)

James Jones

This post has been updated since it was originally posted.

The man arrested Tuesday on suspicion of fatally stabbing his wife in a Dollar General parking lot told police he had been thinking about killing her for months because they argued a lot over him spending money on drugs, according to a probable cause affidavit released Wednesday.

James Otis Jones, 44, is being held on $2 million bail at the Collin County jail.

Jones is the same man who for several months in 2004 was at the center of what’s considered the worst mass murder in McKinney history. Jones confessed to police in April of that year to being involved in the four execution-style slayings at a Truett Street home and implicating two others. The case sparked involvement from the U.S. Department of Justice after escalating racial tensions between police and residents in the east-side neighborhood where it happened.

Steven R. Miears, who was Jones’ attorney at the time, said the confession turned out to be false.

“I was extremely disappointed to learn that he’d been arrested again,” Miears said Wednesday.

Jones also faces two misdemeanor charges of assault by contact/family violence. Jones, who has a long criminal history, was released from the Texas Department of Criminal Justice prison system in April 2014 after serving 10 years for an aggravated kidnapping conviction in Collin County.

McKinney police and fire were called at 9:25 a.m. Tuesday to a report of a stabbing in the parking lot of the Dollar General at 902 N. McDonald St. Mishell Jones, 49, was found stabbed multiple times inside a white 2004 Pontiac sedan parked near the store’s front door. She was transported to a hospital, where she was pronounced dead.

Updated at 4:55 p.m.: A 44-year-old McKinney man has been charged with murder in the fatal stabbing of his wife on Tuesday morning in the Dollar General parking lot.

Police say Mishell Jones, 49, was found stabbed inside her Pontiac sedan. She was transported in critical condition to Medical Center of McKinney, where she later died.

Police took James Otis Jones into custody at the scene and transported him to the police station for questioning. Investigators then obtained a warrant for his arrest. He is being held at the Collin County jail with bail set at $2 million.

The investigation continues. Anyone with information about the case is asked to call Detective Paul Hardin at 972-547-2742.

Original: McKinney police are questioning a suspect in connection with a stabbing Tuesday morning in a Dollar General parking lot.

Police spokeswoman Sabrina Boston said police and fire departments responded at 9:25 a.m. Tuesday to the parking lot at 902 N McDonald St.

The victim was transported to Medical Center of McKinney. The person’s condition was not available. One suspect was taken into custody and is being questioned by police, Boston said.

Joe Harn, spokesman for the Garland Police Department, says 45-year-old David Wade McDermett of Sherman has been charged with the murder of Janet Vanderslice, who was found slain in her home on Lennox Lane July 19. He’s now in the Dallas County jail.

Harn says he was taken into custody Monday in Grayson County and transferred to Dallas today. Garland police believe robbery may have been a possible motive.

Last summer police released video taken from a nearby surveillance camera. At the time police weren’t sure who was in the video. Harn says today that Vanderslice is the person in front, while “the second person was identified as David McDermett, a contractor that was known by Janet Vanderslice.”

Harn says McDermett was actually interviewed by police early on during their investigation — “within the first two months.” Then, and now, he denied his involvement in Vanderslice’s stabbing.

Shortly after Vanderslice’s murder, Harn said investigators were having a hard time identifying suspects or coming up with a motive. There were no signs of forced entry; there were no hints that anyone was looking to harm Vanderslice, whose body was discovered by her son. At the time, Harn said, “Everything right now makes it seem random.”

But police eventually received a tip identifying him as the man on the video.

“We could also see his truck on that video,” says Harn. “It didn’t have a license plate, but it matched him.”

Harn says Vanderslice owns rent homes, and that McDermett occasionally re-roofed houses for her. Harn also says Vanderslice’s checkbook went missing on the day she was killed.

“We do know that he forged some of her checks and cashed them,” says Harn. It took months to make the arrest, he says, because “there was just a ton of investigation and sending things off to have them tested in an effort to tie him to the murder. And there was a lot of talking to the [Dallas County] district attorney’s office about what we had. We don’t do it on our own. Finally, yesterday, we said, ‘We’re going to go get him.’”

Harn says the detective called Vanderslice’s family yesterday to notify them there’d been an arrest. He says they were relieved.

Update at 11:09 a.m. March 11: On Wednesday morning Plano police said they had made an arrest in the stabbing death of 16-year-old Jerry Soto Sunday night.

Jonathan Teran Rodriguez (Plano PD)

David Tilley, spokesman for the department, says 17-year-old Jonathan Teran Rodriguez has been taken into custody in connection with the stabbing, which took place after the two young men got into an argument around 10:30 p.m. Sunday along the 2900 block of E. 15th Street.

Says Tilley, the Plano teen has been charged with murder. He’s being held at the Collin County Detention Center in McKinney on a million-dollar bond.

More to come.

[Editor’s note:This item has been updated since it was initially posted.]

Updated at 2 p.m. March 9 by Wendy Hundley: The 16-year-old stabbing victim was described by friends and neighbors as a friendly, outgoing youth who loved soccer, and was trying to make some positive changes in his life after getting into some trouble with police.

“He was an amazing guy,” said Brian Fernandez, 20, who was had been friends with the victim’s older brother. “He was a good kid then he got introduced to some bad people.”

While he made some mistakes, he didn’t deserve to die at such a young age. “He was just a child (and was) trying to do better,” Fernandez said, fighting back tears.

Neighbor Graciela Gomez said her son went to Meadows Elementary School and Armstrong Middle School with the victim. She said the deceased teen had been involved in some minor crimes, including truancy.

“His mother felt he would go back to school,” Gomez said. “He was trying to turn his life around.”

Original posting at 6:49 a.m. March 9: Plano police are looking for the man who stabbed a 16-year-old to death Sunday night.

According to police, the incident took place around 10:30 p.m. along the 2900 block of E. 15th Street, where the boy and a friend — who’s also 16 — were sitting in front of a house when a man walked by. The two boys and the man got into a “verbal altercation,” says a Plano police spokesman; it remains unclear about what, as the suspect appears to have been a stranger to the two boys.

Police say the argument got so heated the boy followed the man, who then stabbed the 16-year-old numerous times before running off. According to KXAS-Channel 5, “Neighbors said they saw the victim walking along the street and looking for help just before he collapsed” in the street. The boy’s friend drove the victim to Medical Center of Plano, where he was pronounced dead.

At the moment, at least, police don’t have a suspect. According to Plano police spokesman David Tilley, “The suspect was described as a white or Hispanic male believed to be in his late teens, approximately 5-foot-8 tall with a thin build.”

The stabbing happened at a fitness center on State Highway 183 in Irving.

Update at 3:57 p.m.: Irving police have released the name of the man arrested in connection with the stabbing at the 24 Hour Fitness: 32-year-old Phillip Roberts, who has been booked into the Irving City Jail and charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon.

Phillip Roberts

However, says a release from police, “the motive behind the attack is unclear.” Police say Roberts and the woman, who was stabbed several times with a screwdriver while she worked out, have “no known relationship. The investigation is still in the early stages and is ongoing.”

Staff writer Ashley Rose reports at 10:57 a.m.: Police say a man armed with a screwdriver stabbed a woman at an Irving fitness center this morning, seemingly without any provocation.

Officers responded to the stabbing call at the 24 Hour Fitness Center on State Highway 183 shortly before 6 a.m. and found the 49-year-old victim with several puncture wounds.

Witnesses held the 33-year-old suspect until police arrived, and he was taken into custody. The man and woman, both gym members, were not identified, but police spokesman James McLellan said they did not know each other.

That stabbing call followed a 5:30 a.m. call to police about a suspicious man, the suspect, carrying a suitcase around the facility and not working out. Employees told police that he was a member of the gym so they left, McLellan said.

Witnesses tell police that the 33-year-old suspect stabbed the woman while she was working out. There was no argument between them before the altercation, McLellan said. It came out of nowhere.

The woman was taken to Parkland Memorial Hospital. Her injuries don’t appear to be life threatening.

The man is being charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. His name is being withheld until his arraignment later today.

“I don’t want to kill you,” he told the victim, according to police records. The driver handed over his keys and wallet, and the carjacker drove away in the pickup.

Over the next 18 hours, someone driving a pickup matching that description committed several other robberies. In one mugging, a victim at a Home Depot on White Settlement Road was hospitalized after being stabbed Tuesday.

The Dodge Ram was later recovered in the parking lot of the casino where Anderson was arrested after authorities say he tried to break into a car in the parking lot. Gainesville officers ran his information and contacted Fort Worth police.

Anderson is currently being held in the county jail in Marietta, Okla.

Update at 9:44 a.m.: DART spokesman Mark Ball said surveillance video recorded the attack Tuesday morning on the Pearl Station platform.

Ball said the victim was connecting to the Green Line en route to Baylor University Medical Center when an unknown man attacked her.

“We see on the video that they exit different doors, so the impression is that they don’t know each other,” he said. The video then shows the man reaching for the woman, cutting her face or neck, then running away, Ball said.

The suspect is still at large.

Update at 9:19 a.m.: The closure of DART’s Pearl Station due to a stabbing on the platform early Tuesday created headaches for commuters as the transit agency deployed shuttles to compensate for the closed station.

DART spokesman Morgan Lyons said ridership on the downtown trains averages about 30,000 people on a typical weekday morning. He said about 14 buses were put in service to shuttle passengers whose usual train commutes were affected, but many commuters seemed confused — and at times frustrated — by the changes.

DMN Arts & Life Editor Leslie Snyder was among Red Line passengers who boarded shuttles at CityPlace to complete the trip downtown Tuesday morning. She reported that one of the escalators from the platform to street level wasn’t working. And when passengers reached the surface, chaos ensued. The electronic destination signs on the buses didn’t specify where the shuttles would stop, so passengers passengers were left asking police officers, bus drivers and each other about which bus to board and where the buses were going.

David Fank, a Chicago native who lives in East Dallas, was headed to the DMV to get a new driver’s license. He said he planned to wait at Pearl Station until train service resumed because he didn’t want to deal with the shuttles.

It was standing-room only aboard a DART shuttle Tuesday.

“When you see the buses go by, everyone is crammed in like sardines,” he said.

Update at 8:29 a.m.: Service resumed shortly before 8:30 a.m. to DART’s downtown Pearl Station after police completed their investigation of a stabbing.

The station was closed for about three hours after a woman reported being assaulted and stabbed at about 5:30 a.m. on the platform.

Update at 8:04 a.m.: DART spokesman Mark Ball says police plan to allow the station to reopen within 30 minutes.

Update at 7:45 a.m.: DART spokesman Morgan Lyons said a woman reported that she was assaulted and stabbed just before 5:30 a.m. while waiting on a Pearl Station platform.

She suffered cuts to her face and was taken to Baylor Medical Center for treatment. Her condition was unknown as of 7:30 a.m., Lyons said.

He said it is unclear whether the woman was waiting to board a train or had disembarked at the station. He also declined to say whether police had made any arrests.

Police have closed the station as the investigation continues, and DART is using shuttles to get commuters to their destinations, Lyons said.

Original post at 6:12 a.m. by Matt Peterson: Rail service through downtown Dallas has been suspended this morning after a woman was stabbed near the Pearl Street station.

The station was closed about 5:30 a.m. while Dallas and DART police investigated the stabbing at Bryan and Pearl streets near the Arts District.

The woman was reportedly cut on the face as she waited for a train. She was taken to Baylor University Medical Center; her condition was not released.

Dallas Area Rapid Transit set up a bus bridge at the Victory, West End, Deep Ellum and Cityplace stations. At 7:15 a.m., DART released the following alert:

Police situation at Pearl Station remains the same. Bus shuttle servicing Deep Ellum, Cityplace, Pearl, St. Paul, Akard, West End and Victory stations. Our apologies for the inconvenience. Thank you for your patience.